The Tuapeka Times. AND Goldfields Reporter & Advertiser

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5430, 17 April 1907, Page 3

The Tuapeka Times. AND Goldfields Reporter & Advertiser

"Measures, not Men."

17th APRIL, 1907.

THE DOG TAX.

Representatives of the Musterers' Union have been interviewing the Minister for Labor with a view, among other objects, of securing the repeal of the dog tax. They argued that the dog tax was to them a special class tax on industry, inasmuch as it was an impost levied on their stock-in-trade, the actual animated instruments by whose aid they earned their living. There is much force in this contention, but then, on the other hand, the interests of the general community must be considered. The proper way to regard the dog tax is to take it as a license to own animals whose unrestricted ownership would prove a plague and danger to the public. Even under our present limitary mode of treating the natural multiplication of the friend of man, most of the householders in the country have occasional reason to complain of the depredations of nightprowling curs. If the musterers were exempted from dog tax, rabbiters would have a similar -claim to exemption on the score of their dogs being part of the machinery by whose means they earn a living. As it is, we think we are right in stating that considerable concessions are made by the local authorities to persons whose trade makes the use of dogs indispensable. Mr S. Boreharn, in voicing the musterers' grievances, was not quite accurate in stating that all other classes of workers had their tools admitted free of duty. We shall only mention gum boots, but we fancy plenty of other examples could be found. Mr Millar did not give much encouragement to the hopes of the musterers, merely remarking that the dog tax was a locally-imposed tax, and, therefore, not amenable to direct interference by Parliament. We don't think local bodies as a whole wQuld be favorable to its disuse, while there are so many circumstances in the rural districts favorable to the unbounded reproduction of the canine species.